PixlBit

Saturday I played some Peggle, Overlord Fellowship of Evil, Defense Grid 2 and the LocoCycle demo. Sunday was all Halo: Master Chief Collection and Minecraft. Details follow.

These next three games were all played waiting for the LocoCycle demo to install. Peggle was fun as usual but Overlord: FoE was disastrous. You get your minions to control but they aren't much use in the early stages and you find yourself fighting with your overlord a lot and running around trying not to get surrounded. The developers completely forgot what was fun about this series: using your minions to do your dirty work. If the minions are too weak to make much of an impact, you end up having to get your hands dirty, and that is unforgiveable by any overlord worth his muster. I quit out after the first full story mission in disgust and sent my kid gloves to the cleaners right away.

Still waiting for the LocoCycle install, I played Defense Grid 2. It's more of the same tower defense goodness of the first Defense Grid game. It's super fun and gets really complex as you have to manage towers with upgrades. They added platforms that can boost a tower's power and give it a height advantage to increase its range. Also, there's more wide open areas where you have to create the path for the incomming enemies. This added to the puzzling excitement. 

The Lococycle demo finally installed and I played it. This is a Twisted Pixel game, makers of The Maw which I played recently. LocoCycle started out with a long live action video setting up the story. It's very well produced but I wondered at why they would put such an effort into a relatively small game as this - must've cost a fortune. Then you see shiny, moderately detailed graphics and control a high tech motorcycle that has just attained consciousness. The mechanic is attached to the back wheel by his ankle and he and the motocycle make funny comments back and forth during gameplay. Then you shoot and melee (yes, this motorcycle can do melee moves) enemies as you race along a road even using the mechanic as a kind of boomerang. You can speed up but can't stop. That aspect of it reminded me of Panzer Dragoon or a persistant runner game for your phone. Controls are good and the comments by your strangely attached mechanic are funny. I thought it was fine but I couldn't purchase this game because I spent my game allowance on the next game I'm going to mention.

But before I get to that, I fixed my original Xbox problems on Sunday. Turns out I can't use my component cables for most of the games for the system or the colors don't come out right. Then I had to turn off all the settings for higher resolution screens in the system's settings. Then my Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 1 came up perfectly. I forgot that wide screen view and 1080p resolution were kind of holy grails in the early 2000s and many games didn't support it. I'm just glad I fixed the problem. Retro gaming continues!

After that Fix-It-Felix act, Mark and I played Halo: Master Chief Collection on XBO about half the day. We started the co-op playlist that strings all four Halo games together into one long game. We finished Halo: C.E. Anniversary and will do Halo 2: Anniversary tomorrow. I played with that button that switches the game's graphics from old to new a lot. Boy did they add a lot of detail and color to the game. I wouldn't go back to the old graphics for anything. It's amazing what sharp graphics and improvements in animation can do for immersion in a game. We had a blast reliving Halo: C.E. that we used to play every weekend 2001-2004.

Then we were both kind of burned out on running and gunning and played some Minecraft: XBO Edition. The XBO Edition has some improvements like bigger maps and additional sound details - spiders scuttle in a creepy way. It also runs better. I kept getting killed by surprise creepers. That made me very angry. Things got better eventually and then I was chopping creepers from my diamond armored horse with an enchanted diamond sword while a team of dogs followed up and mauled zombie villagers. ODIN OWNES YOU ALL!!!

That be the weekend, but don't worry, my weekend extends to Monday as well. Let the games continue!